Last week, the United Nations General Assembly elected new members to the International Law Commission (ILC), a United Nations body charged with promoting “the progressive development of international law and its codification”. The International Law Commission, which was created by the General Assembly and began its work in 1949, is composed of thirty-four individual expert members of distinct nationalities who identify and analyze underdeveloped areas of international law, in order to propose new norms or understandings. The General Assembly and other UN bodies and agencies may propose topics or draft conventions for the ILC’s study and development.
The new members, selected from a longer list of candidates, and their respective nationalities are: Mohammed Bello Adoke (Nigeria); Ali Mohsen Fetais Al-Marri (Qatar); Lucius C. Caflisch (Switzerland); Enrique J. A. Candioti (Argentina); Pedro Comissário Afonso (Mozambique); Abdelrazeg El-Murtadi Suleiman Gouider (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya); Concepción Escobar Hernández (Spain); Mathias Forteau (France); Kirill Gevorgian (Russian Federation); Juan Manuel Gómez-Robledo (Mexico); Hussein A. Hassouna (Egypt); Mahmoud D. Hmoud (Jordan); Huikang Huang (China); Marie G. Jacobsson (Sweden); Maurice Kamto (Cameroon); Kriangsak Kittichaisaree (Thailand); Ahmed Laraba (Algeria); Donald M. McRae (Canada); Shinya Murase (Japan); Sean D. Murphy (United States of America); Bernd H. Niehaus (Costa Rica); Georg Nolte (Germany); Ki Gab Park (Republic of Korea); Chris M. Peter (United Republic of Tanzania); Ernest Petric (Slovenia); Gilberto V. Saboia (Brazil); Narinder Singh (India); Pavel Šturma (Czech Republic); Dire D. Tladi (South Africa); Eduardo Valencia-Ospina (Colombia); Stephen C. Vasciannie (Jamaica); S. Amos Wako (Kenya); Nugroho Wisnumurti (Indonesia); and, Michael Wood (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland).
As described by the ILC, its work consists of both
progressive development as meaning “the preparation of draft conventions on subjects which have not yet been regulated by international law or in regard to which the law has not yet been sufficiently developed in the practice of States” and codification as meaning “the more precise formulation and systematization of rules of international law in fields where there already has been extensive State practice, precedent and doctrine”. In practice, the Commission’s work on a topic usually involves some aspects of the progressive development as well as the codification of international law, with the balance between the two varying depending on the particular topic.
[quoting ILC Statute, art. 15]
The ILC’s current program of work includes the following topics:
- Expulsion of aliens
- The obligation to extradite or prosecute (aut dedere aut judicare)
- Protection of persons in the event of disasters
- Immunity of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction
- Treaties over time
- The Most-Favoured-Nation clause
- Law of treaties
- Ways and means for making the evidence of customary international law more readily available
- Reservations to treaties
- Fragmentation of international law: difficulties arising from the diversification and expansion of international law
- Effects of armed conflicts on treaties
- Succession of States with respect to treaties
- Nationality including statelessness
- Formulation of the Nürnberg Principles
- Question of international criminal jurisdiction
- Draft code of offences against the peace and security of mankind (Part I)
- Draft code of crimes against the peace and security of mankind (Part II) – including the draft statute for an international criminal court
- State responsibility